The invention relates generally to room air conditioners and, more particular, to an arrangement for mounting the thermostat capillary adjacent to the indoor coil of an air conditioner unit.
It is customary in the design of window room air conditioners to mount the capillary for the systems control thermostat across the face of the indoor coil so that it may sense the room air temperature as it flows into the unit and across the capillary before entering the coil to be cooled. The capillary is generally located about one eighth to one quarter of an inch away from the coil surface so that if the coil starts to ice up, the ice will build up until it touches the capillary thereby causing the thermostat to open and shut the compressor off. Also, typically capillaries are sleeved in plastic to protect them from radiant cooling from the coil.
In an typical installation the plastic sleeve containing the capillary is received in and supported by several separate support retainers which attach to the coil and hold the capillary in the desired position adjacent the inside face of the evaporator coil.
A common filter arrangement for window air conditioners is a filter which slides into the air conditioning unit from the top into a slot to position the filter in air flow relationship to the indoor coil so as to protect the coil from undesirable airborne particulate. It has been found that such slide in filters often are interfered with by the capillary and especially the retainers used to mount the capillary, as it is necessary that the capillary be positioned in the region between the face of the coil and the filter element. As a result such interference can be annoying to the user and in such cases can cause breakage of either the capillary or the slide in filter.